Childhood: Early 1976 in Mushin, Lagos

Experience to new experience

A piece of childhood history has just been triggered by a Facebook friend request that I am ambivalent about honouring. In early 1976, I was sent from the north in Kaduna where we lived to stay with relations in the South West, and this was to attend common entrance examinations to secondary schools in the region my parents came from.

I was picked up from the airport in Lagos and on our way to where I was to be staying, I was sick in the car. Everyone was gentle with me, I survived and recovered well after that.

In Ibadan, there was a rite of passage, probably what put me off learning to drive when the driver distracted and attending to other activities asked me to grab the steering wheel just short of careering into a ravine. Though it did not appear I passed the examinations having flown from Kaduna, it was the time that I had a full sexual experience with a 16-year old.

Then, I happened to be in Sagamu in February, at the time that the Head of State, Murtala Mohammed was assassinated. Then also for examinations and another 16-year old finding his pleasures with me. I might well have been a catamite.

A Lagos of a dream

Returning to Lagos, I was in Mushin on Araromi Street, number 29 if I can recall. An older cousin of my father with adult children, the last, just about my age. He worked in the same company as my father but in a slightly junior capacity. His wife worked at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in the catering department and his mother-in-law lived just up the road, we called her Ma Mije.

His father was a lay reader of our old St. Jude’s Anglican Church in our village, known to all with the corrupted version of his honorific title, Lerida. A friendly and jovial man who entertained with hot sweet and milky tea and loaves of bread. He was the tea connoisseur of our village and well-liked.

One of his sons was in his twenties, he had finished secondary school, two others were close to the end of their secondary education. The December before, their big sister got married, remnants of the wedding cake kept on top of a cupboard. She put to bed soon afterwards, but her husband was abroad studying whilst she lived in the newly developing suburbs.

Surely not a negative

She sometimes visited and helped with my lessons, that was when I learnt of negative numbers in Mathematics for all I knew before then was Arithmetic, the concept of negative numbers were so alien to me and questions of that sort featured a lot in the common entrance examinations.

She had just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lagos and when we visited her, I drank Tennant’s Light Lager, it is strange a 10-year old was allowed such leeway.

In the Easter of that year, we went to Bar Beach, the big boys picked me up and threw me in the raging surf. That experience probably informed my fear of water and so my inability to swim until this day.

Representing them to some

During my stay, there was a visitor to the company from Japan, they worked for a textile company with my father being the chief accountant. In Lagos, I was the one wheeled out to converse and engage with the guest as everyone else was shut away. We went over maps of the world in an atlas and when he was leaving, he gave me lots of Yen.

I returned to Kaduna late in the month of May, but it is very likely that was last time I saw the eldest son of the family, who has now asked to be a friend on Facebook. There are so many things I remember, the star clock on the wall in the living room, the scent of Oil of Ulay that was quite off-putting.

The incomplete third storey roof where the big boys went to smoke cigarettes, the girl in the ground floor apartment that won a place to Mayflower School, Ikenne when I ended up down the road at Remo Secondary School, Sagamu.

My tenth-year harbours much to remember about childhood and some things I would rather forget as I touched on my 11^th birthday. It was both an adventurous and scary time, I sometimes wonder, what were my parents thinking when they made some decisions from 1975 into 1976?

Nigeria: The Collapse of Order

Collapse upon collapse

Like the head of the synagogue upbraided Jesus for healing the sick on the Sabbath, the contemporary head of the synagogue now threatens us with wrath, retribution and terror for asking the sensible questions. A collapse of reasonableness.

A month has passed since a building collapse claimed over a 100 lives of which more than 80 were South Africans, the many who had come on a sort of pilgrimage to Lagos to prolong their lives with the expectation of miracles bordering on magical acts for healing, peace or some particular touch of grace, mercy or favour for this man of God. A catastrophic building collapse.

The man has every right to go about his business, but it must not be at the expense of lives carelessly lost for the very likelihood that building codes were flouted and ignored. Yet, this is a collapse of institutional heft to ensure laws are adhered to.

The untenable collapses

The whole idea that some unidentified flying object hovering over the building shook it to its pulverised destruction according the head of the synagogue is as fantastic as it is risible, yet this atrocity has had no one held responsible for it. Suffice it to say, this is a collapse of reason.

Each apparent message that appears to come out from the establishment seems to put the focus on the head of the synagogue as the victim of machinations both spiritual and temporary, his own personal crisis that he intends to overcome. No doubt the collapse of accountability that is the everyday expectation of the powerful in Nigeria.

The hapless victims sacrificed to this atrocity have been labelled martyrs and surreptitiously this characterisation lends itself to exculpating the whole officialdom of the Synagogue Church of all Nations (SCOAN) from any responsibility for the deaths of these people. Besides the collapse of responsibility is the collapse of real compassion for the lost.

The inexcusable collapses

The government itself has been derelict in its responsibility too by pandering to the whims of men of God, fearful of their power and followership that the law consequently grants immunity for more impunity by these demigods. The collapse of the lien of civil authority to ensure public order is kept by holding everyone equal before the law.

The president and the governor should by rights have visited the site of the disaster, but were ill-advised to have a photo opportunity with the head of the synagogue until they had established the truth about the building collapse. The collapse of discernment and discretion on the part of people who should have known better.

Besides, the visit could have precipitated a diplomatic crisis with South Africa and soured relations with them, considering South Africa was more forthcoming about the numbers of their citizens lost than the head of the synagogue who while schmoozing with the press for favourable coverage wanted them to concentrate on mentioning survivors of the mishap. A collapse of diplomatic tact considering the number of foreigners that perished in the incident, it was utterly careless.

Avoid more collapses

Sadly, if nothing is done to bring the law to bear on this event with at the minimum indictments of manslaughter imposed on the leadership and the corporate person of the (Synagogue Church of All Nations) SCOAN, we would have lost the best opportunity to show that no one is above the law regardless of whether the person is a religious leader or not, and that someone can and should be held accountable for avoidable accidents as a result of people acting unlawfully and carelessly. A collapse of our criminal justice system resulting in the collapse of justice for the victims and of judicial process.

Nigeria needs to be delivered from the stranglehold of untouchable men of God answerable to no temporal authority and thereby are deluded into acting with untrammelled licence leave destruction in their wake and leaving God to clean up their mess. Here we risk the collapse of the primacy of the secular state that applies the law equitably, expeditiously and rightly.

Childhood: Learning to cope away from home

Sent away

As I was reaching the age of 10, having lived with my parents literally all my life apart from times when I was cared for by nannies when we were in England, they were thinking of where I would go to secondary school.

We lived in the North of Nigeria but they concentrated on trying to get me admitted into a secondary school in South-West Nigeria where my parents were from.

All down South and nowhere else

In fact, I cannot remember any instance where I was entered for any common entrance examinations or admission lists for any of the good secondary schools in Kaduna or Jos where we had lived for about 5 years.

Instead, I was taken out of school in January and put on a plane first to Ibadan where besides taking exams and one hair-raising incident where the driver of the vehicle I was in with 3 distant cousins left the steering wheel to me as we almost teetered over the edge of a ravine, only providence changed that course of history as I came into the most experience of sexual abuse in the week that I was there.

Liberties taken and voice lost

I returned home a bit tongue-tied, I had received many gifts but could not account for how I had given some away to ward off abuse which my parents took as evidence of me being a wastrel currying favour off people by being overly generous – how I should have spoken up but for the fear and loathing of my experiences.

Two weeks later, I was on a plane again to Lagos where I spent over four months out of school shunted between relations, grandparents and my cousins as common entrance examinations were scheduled throughout Lagos and Ogun States revealing stark contrasts between arithmetic that we did up north and mathematics that was the mainstay down south, I never knew the concept of negative numbers until then, it was an aunt studying Electrical Engineering at University of Lagos who helped me there.

Choices made from limited options

I probably attended 10 examinations in all completely away from the routine of school and the comforts of home that I had known all my life, it laid the foundations for what was to come when I had choices, I refused to go to one that shared its grounds with a cemetery, I had been sensitised to terrifying fear, in the ensuing months, something I never had before I went away.

Eventually I had one chosen and preparations for boarding school began – school uniform instructions poorly stated, a metal portmanteau, a machete/cutlass that was useless of the purpose it was intended for – cutting grass, it was heavy, blunt and probably it would have been better in the hands of a lumberjack than a scrawny tall 10-year old – they knew no better.

It was hell, just without the fire

I cannot elicit to any detail what informed my parents about this idea of sending me away apart from wanting to probably toughen me up and give me the opportunity to meet more of my close and distant relations as well as give me the environment to learn Yoruba.

Soon after I arrived at boarding school the process of toughening did toughen me as we found ways to compensate for the sadism and abuse that passed for discipline and corporal punishment sanctioned by the system of hierarchies of seniors and teachers – they all got away with it, our parents none the wiser apart from being assured that their kids were getting a comprehensive education for life ahead.

If I did have my own children, it is unlikely I would have acquiesced to this barbaric regime of treating children like stubborn mules that needed to be forced to respond and react to coercion imposed by inflicting pain – that is another story to be told.

Nigeria: Angels in road construction

Worldwide wrestling

I dare say that this borders on what I will call the superfluity of spirituality but it is probably par for the course in Nigeria where frustration, exasperation, delay, inertia, bureaucracy and corruption militates against getting things done.

With ease, when things are so muddled up, such man-made and man-caused circumstances can for those in the know be classified under categories that the Bible so clearly enunciates and is known by heart to many a praying Christian.

In Ephesians 6:12 - For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (KJV)

In 17^th Century English, I might have lost my readers so maybe the Message in contemporary English might enlighten us “This is no afternoon athletic contest that we'll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.” Ephesians 6:12 (The Message)

A road in ruin

I do not think I am any the wiser with this attempt but it serves as the lead in to an issue in Nigeria with regards to the first toll road called the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

It is 105 kilometres long and it opened to traffic in 1978, though I remember people bribing military officers who stood guard at the main toll areas of the road to use it in late 1977.

In any case, it has fallen into abject disrepair from usage and neglect that the federal government adopted a novel way [1] of getting it repaired. In what is a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) contract that will span 25 years, the concessionaire will repair the road, add two lanes on either side and install gas lighting – gas lighting? Well, Dusk to dawn gas lighting down the length of the expressway with the lien to levy tolls and seek other revenue through advertisements.

The concessionaire is the Bi-Courtney Group and the project will cost upwards of NGN 90 billion ($600 million) which is quite an outlay for a local company that hopes to recoup its cost over 25 years.

An Amen waiting for a prayer

The Chairman of Bi-Courtney Highways Services Limited paid a courtesy call [2] on the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God whose Redemption City religious meeting place and residential area is sited along the road where it became evident that the concessionaire might have bitten off more than it can chew because banking services in Nigeria do not as a matter of course provide loan terms of that kind of duration and this is hampering the necessary activity of the repairs of the road.

The widening of the road has created a whole series of legal challenges from those affected who might find their properties subject to compulsory purchase orders (Eminent Domain - US), all this from the foolishness of the concessionaire, through their hope of getting financing and the legal minefields of compulsory purchase will constitute the categories listed above as the weight of immovability might well be unearthly and beyond the work horse requirements of construction equipment put at full throttle.

It is in that context that one is left to holler the loudest Amen to the prayer of the General Overseer as the news headline indicates, “God will subdue forces against completion,” and I believe he means the completion of the project.

An unfathomable situation

Now, at face value, the Chairman, Dr Wale Babalakin (SAN) [3] is no doubt a smart lawyer having obtained both his LLM and PhD from the University of Cambridge and he has a commendable legal record, however, this project smacks of a level of Nigerian braggadocio that leaves you breathless; none of the well-heeled banks for all the legal sophistry he can muster in Nigeria seem to be ready to form a consortium to bankroll this project.

How the Bi-Courtney Group could not have had serious backers for this job before securing the concession is just beyond belief, then the 55 legal cases which all can drag on at snail’s pace in Nigeria’s sometimes soporific judicial system you begin to realise that you need the hand of God and angels in their thousands of thousands all with trumpets and heavenly strains of praise that would make the earth tremble and melt to get things done.

Impossible human doers

The Redemption City can host over 1 million adherents at monthly religious events which somewhat makes one wonder how they have endured the decrepit state of the road with equanimity, docility and possibly resignation except for their resort to the mountain moving power of prayer.

On a human level, with the resources we have on earth to observe, to agitate, to persuade, to protest, to require and to obtain; one would have expected a pressure group of the 1 million adherents and the other plaintiffs at risk of losing their land to set forth a court action to remove the concessionaire and have the concession renegotiated to necessitate the easier financing of this project on different terms and probably by another contractor.

A miracle like no other

I for one expect a miracle, one that definitely defies every human explanation that Redemption City had better be ready to host the billion, a road all paved in gold like we were told in Sunday School of heavenly paradise, this gold being so durable and perfect, it cannot be chipped or removed, yet will survive all weather and traffic putting the autobahns of Germany in the shade.

People may use the road, it will be safe no matter how careless the driver is and those who cannot ply the road for the gleaming sensation of the gold can just look at the road with every consumption of greed and frustration until they are exhausted at the foretaste of heaven that they move on there anyhow.

Since the road is a gift of God and the answer to the prayers of the faithful, the Redemption City could charge a nominal fee for its usage whilst extolling the greatness of their mission to earth.

Judgement so sweet

As for the concessionaire; an earthquake awaits any of its representatives that dare claim anything for that road, the earth will open up like a trapdoor and swallow them in Mosaic dread.

All forces subdued, prayers answer, congregation multiplied, souls saved and God praised – there can be no better place in the world than Nigeria where even for our tourist brochures we can safely say our streets are paved with gold.

Sources

[1] At Last, Work Begins On Lagos-Ibadan Expressway | P.M. NEWS Nigeria

[2] The Nation - Lagos-Ibadan Expressway: God will subdue forces against completion, says Adeboye

[3] Babalakin & Co. Legal Practitioners - People - Bolanle Olawale Babalakin SAN

Nigeria: A Robbery ReTweeted and Reported

A robbery ReTweeted

I was engaged on one of my usual late night Twitter conversations when a ReTweet appeared announcing a robbery taking place at a Lagos suburb address, it appeared desperate – in fact, any robbery in Lagos is desperately a matter of life and death.

As I experienced some 23 years ago, we were at the mercy of callous and ruthless armed men who went about in groups of 10 or more and had no compunction about shooting any of their victims, if it so caught their fancy.

One could well imagine either the victim sending the Tweet or someone witnessing the event from somewhere else; in either case, it would appear the person could not call the police.

We conversed about getting the phone numbers to the police stations and opined about the non-availability of toll-free easy-to-remember numbers; in the end we obtained a number of 11-digit phone numbers shared on Twitter and eventually some easy-to-remember toll-free numbers 767 & 999 that could be called within Lagos that were found to be working.

Call from anywhere

Meanwhile, one of my Twitter conversants called the police and reported the incident, they at first did not know the address but after a clearer description of the location they said they will “detail” (Nigerianese for instruct) to attend to the situation.

This was thanks to a Google search for the address and the indication of some landmarks. It goes without saying that our Nigerian cities need to have postcode identification amongst other signifiers to help agencies locate places easily.

Living in the Netherlands, I first felt I would not be taken seriously if I called but I eventually did call the Lagos Police Emergency Number which was 002347055462708.

Acting on it already

Someone at the station picked up the phone and I introduced myself as a caller from Holland, which surprised them as I gave them the information that there was a robbery reported on the Internet that needed attending to.

I was passed on to another officer who first asked if I had called earlier, I hadn’t; but I was informed, it transpired they had already been called (this, I think would be the call they received earlier), they now knew where the problem was and he told me the police official in charge of that location had been detailed to visit the address with a troop of police officers.

They seemed to be confident of what they were doing and I thanked them for seeing to the situation.

One can only hope that despite the trauma of the victims of the robbery the robbers do get caught and the victims are OK after their ordeal.

Usefulness of social media

For those who have pooh-poohed the usefulness of Twitter for anything especially in Nigeria, I would hope that this inspires people of the possibilities; starting with the presence of mind to Tweet an event through to the interest of others to act on the information received with the hope that something can be done.

In this case, I believe the police received at least two phone calls about an event and if anything, they would have been geared up to deal with the situation, promptly and with dispatch.

With the elections coming up in April 2011, every social media tool along with mobile phones should be employed in ensuring we have free, fair, transparent and honest elections – it will only happen if we all get involved, the people on the ground reporting and others disseminating and sharing the detail with others who can act on the situation or crisis.

With regards to the elections you need to go to ReVoDa | How it works we have the tools, it is time to use them to our best advantage especially in sticky situations.

Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos - An inspiration

Originally published on Nigerians Talk.ORG please post your comments and views there. Thanks.

Expected little

Having seen the seeming hatchet job on Nigerians in District 9 [1] and only seen the first part of Blood and Oil [2], I was like many others of Nigerian heritage ready to be cynical about the another telescope on Nigeria centred on Lagos.

Indeed, there have been rather unfair and negative portraits of Nigeria by the realities, the poor news research and the acts of Nigerians especially their leaders that any new perspective might well draw broad skepticism before viewing what was to be said.

Expectations of Welcome to Lagos [3] – a 3-part documentary of which the first was shown yesterday was presaged with low expectations and considerable criticism with defensiveness long before it had been aired – the need for balance on matters concerning Nigeria where getting positive perspectives might be fleeting at best is a fervent desire.

Whilst balance is necessary, sometimes the truth is better, the reality is sure and an understanding of the perspective is pertinent – we were told, Welcome to Lagos will defy our expectations [4] from every objective perspective, it did.

I recorded it on my digital video recorder and I would be watching it again and again, it has been set to record the next two episodes automatically.

Beyond the rump of a dump

The producers of this documentary went to observe life in the Olusosun rubbish dump where about a 1000 people live, work and thrive with an amazing spirit of humanity.

People can so easily be blind-sided by the setting and miss the more serious message of people who are resourceful, able, diligent, orderly, respectful, responsible and successful – all that not necessarily the way we would view those attributes.

You had to look above the ground to see beyond the default to another shameful view of Nigeria and Nigerians – this was no window-dressing as we would all want people to see of us, but this life that had much to teach everyone.

The human stories

A number of themes came through strongly in this documentary, people were very hardworking, working all hours with particular aims to provide for their families or in another case to launch a career in music – they gave everything to that vision of responsibility.

At another end of town, a cattle market showed the cattle broker who years ago was a nomadic herdsman from the North and now was the chief broker, speaking 6 languages and making really amazing business deals that could better so-called efficient markets.

There you found an agricultural science graduate who found an opportunity for processing the blood of cattle slaughtered in the abbatoirs for feeding poultry.

Enterprising and improvising

Back at the dump, the waste thrown out by the seemingly well-off found extended usages, better uses or some recycle value that most of the residents thrived on; scavengers at the bottom of the market chain sold to bulk gatherers who sold wholesale to industries – economic laws just worked.

The human interest quality was just exuberant, the bulk gatherer had a very good command of English with an enlightened vocabulary, the scavenger hoping for a music career after working for studio fees had a manicure and when he turned up for his recording session, there is no way you would have believed he lived in a dump.

The sense of community and order was strong, when a fire engulfed the dump, they all gathered with the fire service to quench the flames; when a thief was caught amongst them, I expected the rough justice of a lynching but the culprit was given a stern telling off and banished from the dump.

A community of love and care

The community bond was even deeper as they had a hierarchy built on the democratically elected chairman who was the authority, judge, arbiter and father-figure to the community, when the aspiring artist got into serious police trouble after being charged with grievous bodily harm occasioning the loss of sight in one eye of the victim they closed rank in support.

Having negotiated an out of court settlement with the family of the victim the whole community chipped in to defray of the hospital treatment costs totally and gave the aspiring artist a second chance to redeem himself – our political leaders need to visit this university of commendable leadership.

See the people not the dump

Again the setting of this documentary was a dump but the people were not in the dumps, they were aspiring, amazing people who were optimistic, honest and friendly, they had a sense of purpose that was not encumbered with senseless fanaticism and religious stupidity – they were the salt of the earth.

After watching this, you could only first count your blessings, then proclaim that Nigerians just have the innate ability to make the best of any situation without grumbling, bitterness or rancour.

I saw Nigerians that made me proud and none of them despite where they lived and worked could ever be seen as anything short of a rebranding of Nigeria with values, aims and a driven passion for the pursuit of happiness.

I cannot wait to see the second part of Welcome to Lagos – not the superficial and the mimicry but of real people of substance with their heads lifted up and their feet on the ground. They might have been poor but they had no poverty of spirit, ideas, goals or desires for a better future.

Sources

[1] District 9 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] BBC - BBC Two Programmes - Blood and Oil

[3] BBC - BBC Two Programmes - Welcome to Lagos

[4] BBC - BBC TV blog: Welcome to Lagos - it'll defy your expectations

Related articles by Zemanta

• Welcome to Lagos | TV Review (guardian.co.uk)
• Lagos: a city teeming with business flair (guardian.co.uk)

My reviews of all the parts of BBC’s Welcome to Lagos documentary
Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos III - Welthauptstadt Nigeria
Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos II - Beyond Civic Pride
Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos - An inspiration

Nigeria: 34 burnt to death siphoning oil

Pipeline breach deaths again

There is a fundamental issue that does not seem to receive adequate redress in Nigeria. It has become so recurrent that it is both an embarrassment and a tragedy.

News arrives that another pipeline was deliberately breached and in the process of people siphoning highly volatile and flammable fuel from the pipeline it was ignited and at least 34 people have been burnt to death. Exactly a year ago, we had the same thing happen.

The toll would definitely be higher for those who have momentarily survived with serious burns that may not get adequate treatment from our poor triage services.

Fuel for cooking

Evidently, the reason why these pipelines are breached is because fuel is needed for literally everything in urban settings like Lagos, first for cooking, then for lighting and transport.

Cooking most especially makes the most demands, the West African cuisine does not lend itself to cold foods that much, literally everything needs to be cooked and spiced – all for taste and the prevention of food-borne disease or dangerous parasites.

That does not in itself justify the vandalising national infrastructure for personal needs and that is where the government of the people for the people has a serious responsibility that it has failed to wake up to.

The transport angle becomes a harrowing tale of despair and the hopelessness when petrol stations were giving priority to hearses that had to show the presence of cadaver cargo to be served – it makes you weep; though this particular case was in Zimbabwe.

Affordable fuel for the people

Nigeria being an oil-producing nation should have in place the means and infrastructure to ensure that this oil is both available and affordable to the general populace.

We need to invest in refining capacity that means both the needs of our contracts in the international marketplace and the critical needs of our people for the primary aspects of survival and development. It is outrageous that Nigeria as the 7^th largest oil-producing nation in the world needs to import refined product to meet its needs.

Again, people cannot continue to countenance that fact that the pipelines in their backyards are the source of such unbelievable sums of money that comes nowhere near affecting their lives positively.

It is this same problem that gives oxygen to the insurgencies in the Niger Delta Region, people seeing their land and water laid to waste by national and international conglomerates; the profits from extraction ending in white elephant projects or corrupt enrichment.

There has to be fairness and equity in the management of our natural resources for the benefit of all people of Nigeria and it takes a government that understands its mandate to govern and service to humanity to take on that hard job.

They perish for need

The folly of people who approach leaking petroleum pipelines going from the many incidents that have happened in recent years is lamentable, but the underlying problem is evident – they cannot afford what is supposed to be a produce of their own land and our attention to protecting national infrastructure through maintenance and security is very poor.

It is a very horrid thing for those whose lives were lost and a sad time for those they left behind, possibly on the premise that they only wanted to feed their families and needed fuel to cook the little food they had to share.

Get doing something

The criminal element needs to be addressed, but the issue is in the causes of this activity, we should not need another panel of experts to write another white paper about the obvious – some sleeves need to be rolled up for this matter and none of getting it bogged down in some task force quango.

There have been probes which are simply a euphemism for appearing to do something but really achieving nothing and learning no lessons, they are a travesty.

May they who have perished in so horrific a mishap rest in peace, one cannot begin to feel the pain of it all – so sad it is.

Other readings

The affordability of refined product in Nigeria – Chippla’s Weblog

Nigeria: They were burnt like tinder to cinder – March 2007

Unnamed, unknown, unsung and undone in Nigeria – May 2006

The lion is the jewel - Wole Soyinka

The man over the boy

The contrast cannot have been any clearer as to see the HardTalk interview of the 1986 Literature Nobel Laureate; Professor Wole Soyinka by Stephen Sackur this morning putting the ordinary and lack-lustre Chief Ojo Maduekwe - the Foreign Minister of Nigeria in the shade.

It would contemptible to offer to compare these two personalities, but I was both pleased, impressed and proud to hear Wole Soyinka address the issue of his vocation and activism in relation to the politics of Africa.

It was also interesting that Wole Soyinka was not interviewed as a playwright on the sister programme HardTalk Extra, but on the substantive HardTalk programme with a live audience in Lagos that applauded at the end of the interview.

Nigeria is not a democracy

The Professor rubbished the context of Nigerian democracy highlighting the fact that the elections were seriously flawed and democratic institutions had been undermined by the executive in the tenure of the last President.

He was disgusted by the fact that political thuggery found expression and patronage from the ruling “democrats” but lauded the fact that despite repression and dictatorial tendencies the freedom of the press has been sacrosanct; maybe in another forum he can address the issue of quality.

Many would agree that it takes a special kind of temperament to get involved in Nigerian politics, even my foray into student union politics has taught me too much already – the Professor contented that he had a bigger forum with his work, writing and expression than to be subsumed into what is essentially a quagmire.

Complacency in Nigeria

He talked of his membership of a forum that is concerned about a creeping complacency and resignation to issues that have been abused in the country, especially that of the electoral process.

The fear is that many have placed their optimism for resolution in the future without really addressing the problems now. Another point he mentioned was that Nigeria is becoming a powder-keg ready to go off as people realise how resources are plundered to the detriment of others. The example he gave of shared poverty being a shared prosperity in Tanzania was quite an insight.

We should remember that the day before, the views of Wole Soyinka about the political situation were discounted by the Nigerian Foreign Minister, but it was Wole Soyinka that was invited by the US Congress to testify on the matters of the election.

A conflagration about to consume

In the end, the Professor is not advocating violence, his struggle is to bring the complete democratic process into all facets of life; but he also sees where resentment might eventually flare up into an unmanageable situation – our leaders need to take note of the fact that the people would only allow themselves to be taken for fools for so long after which, nobody knows what might really happen.

This interview was part of the BBC “Why Democracy?” season, it is a question that needs to be answered because like the Professor said, at independence, there was an aspiration and vision to bring radical change to Africa, all of which has floundered in the depictions that emanate from Sudan and Zimbabwe as the worst cases of egregious abuse of power in Africa.

Playing by the rules

Nigeria however finds itself in a situation where the rulers abuse the rules and processes with impunity and hubris, but we who seek justice and fair-play have to use the democratic rules of due process, the respect of the rule of law and an assuredly independent judiciary – impartial in its analysis, fearless in its judgements and courageous in debunking megalomaniac potentates.

From that point, Wole Soyinka represents a beacon of hope for Nigeria, he may never vie for President but he is a worthy president and representative of the hope and aspirations for a better governed and equitable Nigeria - He is the lion and the jewel [The Lion and the Jewel (1963) is one of Professor Wole Soyinka's best known plays] stating how precious democracy is to the real development of Nigeria.

It also means that those in power today might still be deprived of the mandate to rule if the electoral tribunal elects to invalidate the flawed elections of April 2007.

The interview (Real Media file, you can obtain RealAlternative [Link to executable] to play this back in Windows Media Player).